Grank Turk

On Saturday we all flew to Grand Turk (the nation's capital). I am very fond of Grand Turk and whilst I'm not sure I could live there full time (very small village), it is lovely to visit for a weekend. Nicky had a boat load of trees coming up from the Dominican Republic (about 90 miles south of us) and he needed to organise the planting of same. We flew in a tiny prop. plane which took about 20 passengers - you had to crouch to get into the plane, there was an aisle down the middle, with single seats on either side of the aisle. Osh was very excited about flying in a 'Stuart Little' plane and wasn't the least bit perturbed by the noise (propeller planes are very noisy).

We spent Saturday on the island having lunch and playing in the pool and much of Sunday doing the same. We also paid a visit to Daniel's Grandmother. Daniel's mother was born in Grand Turk and his Grandmother still lives there (as do a collection of Aunties and cousins). Grandma Lucy (as she is known) is a delightful woman who gave Osh $5 to buy sweeties (Osh was delighted with his 'five pound note' as he kept calling it) and provided me with what information she could remember so that Daniel and I can put together his family tree. With ancesters from the UK and Martinique, it is certainly an interesting family!

On Monday Nicky got to grips with planting the trees (which of course first involved finding someone to pull the trailer up from the dock, then finding a telescopic forklift to get them off the trailer (we are talking of 20' coconut palms here....!) and then he needed a back hoe to dig the holes. Somehow I got roped into interpreting for the Dominican driver (there are a lot of Dominican's here too) which was a challenge. The Dominican accent is like a Venezuelan one only more so and my vocabularly of construction vehicles is pretty limited.

Monday also involved sorting out my visa extension - which I had (foolishly) assumed would be easier to do in Grand Turk (on account of it being a much smaller island); WRONG! They wouldn't accept Nicky as surety because he lived in Provo, not Grand Turk. When I asked if I could have 2 new forms so that I could get a Grand Turk resident to act as surety the man looked puzzled and got a more senior officer who then told me that because I was intending to stay in Provo I had to apply for the extension there. Bearing in mind that this is all one country and all arrivals get their visa in Provo at the airport before moving to other islands this rule is bizarre. So, Osh and I hopped on a plane back to Provo to try and get it done there - the visa ran out on Monday so time was of the essence. Getting the paperwork sorted in Provo wasn't too bad - except government offices all have different times. In order to pay for the visa you have to take the money to treasury (which, usefully, closes a full 45 minutes before immigration) and by the time I'd got the paper work sorted out treasury was closed so I spent Monday night and Tuesday morning as an illegal immigrant. That was a first.

Osh is now well versed in just how complex government is and how BORING it is to spend all day waiting for an officer with the magic stamp to get back from whereever he has disappeared to.

The photos are of me and Osh in the pool, Osh opening the door of the Prison in Grand Turk (prison last used in 1990, now been 'disneyfied' for the cruise ship visitors...yuk), the old phone box on Front Street and a salt pond (how the country made it's money until the turn of the 20th c. The pond is no longer in use but still hold water...and can get pretty miffy!). Turns out that Daniel's great great grandfather was a salt man....Daniel was hoping he'd been a slave master but turns out that he was doing this long after slavery was abolished.

Preachers

I was fitted with soft lenses yesterday and am getting used to them - but still feels like I am wearing someone else's eyeballs!

Tomorrow we are all off to Grand Turk: Nicky has a boat of trees arriving from the Dominican Republic that need planting so we are going to flop around the swimming pool while he does the hard work (!). On Monday we'll renew our visas there - with a much smaller population on Grand Turk the lines for getting the visa sorted out should be shorter.

We tried to renew them yesterday but it was taking forever but we were treated (the whole room, not just me and Osh) to a prime example of Turks Island racism when a man came in and starting ranting and raving that he had to wait his turn behind all the Haitains and Dominicans and Jamaicans waiting to sort out their paperwork. Although the islands would collapse overnight if all the migrant labour left, it doesn't stop the local population bearing a tremendous grudge against all the immigrants. Enoch Powell would (with rather beautiful irony) find himself in good company here...

The local newspaper (published once week on account of there not being enough news to justify a daily!) carried an astonishing piece the other week about the hoards of illegal Haitians in the country who are now (apparently) outnumbering the locals, spreading disease and voodoo and all sorts. Rivers of Blood all over again!

Don't know about the Voodoo but they do a very fine line in loud, tuneless gospel which starts up every day at dusk and continues until about 10pm. The noise comes from a church (denomination unknown, but clearly in the happy clappy bracket) a couple of miles away but sounds like it is next door. How the preacher finds the strength to rant (all in Creole) each night is beyond us but more power to the man who yells Hallelujah over and over and over again for minutes at a time.

Those of you familiar with West Africa will be able to picture the fevour perfectly!

Finally, and completely unconnected to the matter of Haitian preachers, here is a picture of the Oshlet by the truck which I'm driving around.

Our house again

So, here are some photos of Osh's room and my room (right next door to each other).





The washing machine is a strong work horse and not the prettiest appliance...but it does what it should do (wash clothes) so no complaints. The buckets around the machine are to catch the water. Although the machine would empty the water down the pipe (and out into the bush) this is a gross waste of water in a country with precious little of the stuff. So, the grey water from the rinse cycle is used to wash the next load, the grey water from the wash cycle (which has now been used twice) is used to water the plants/flush the toilets and fresh water is used for the rinse cycle. Our water is delivered by tanker and we get through a tank about once a month - if we didn't conserve water like this we'd get through much more and it would cost twice as much. Sounds primative but at the end of the day we have clean clothes, healthy plants and we don't spend a fortune on water! Many properties have piped water but the pipes don't get this far up the road, hence our drinking water coming by tanker (and at 6 cents a gallon rather than 3 for piped water). You certainly get a good feel for how much water a washing machine can consume when you see it all in buckets (about 4 of those big buckets full each cycle!).



And here is a view of the bedroom end of the house from outside - the continuation of the wall with the shutters is the front door (where you saw the green chairs in the other posting). The shutters are left open except when the rain is coming from the wrong direction in which case some poor so and so has to dash outside and whip out the sticks that hold the shutters open. No glass, remember, so plenty of rain can get in if you forget to close shutters.



We have flush toilets - the water that flushes them is the irrigation water (ie cleaned up and filtered sewage water....sounds disgusting but it doesn't smell and is the colour of weak tea) but the pump is consistently turned off by the workers and rather than go outside and turn the pump back on, we flush the toilets with grey water (just in case the more plumbing minded of you were wondering!).

As you can imagine, living so, erm, basically could take some getting used to but we love it - although Nicky is half way through building a concrete house with stairs and everyfink!

Our house

I've had lots of requests for pictures of the house, so here they are!

Nicky built the house about 10 years ago and it has been added to slowly over the years. It is built on a concrete base, it is built of wood it has a sloping roof with straps over it to hold it down in the event of a hurricane! Because the weather is always warm (although not always dry) there is not much distinction between the inside and the outside. The washing machine lives outside, as does one of the fridges and you have to walk through a covered walk way to get to the living room. Going back to an enclosed house is going to be very odd.

Here is a photo of the front of the house which faces East (the house is built is that the trade winds (E-W) blow straight through it). There is a huge Ficus tree in front of the house which provides lots of shade during the day but also a lot of leaves for me to sweep up daily! We often eat outside in the evening. You can't see them, but around the door we have a stack of pretty conch shells, lots of agave plants, a couple of pineapple plants, a sago palm, a thatch palm and a coconut (all in pots) and some pretty pink prickly things.....! This photo was taken around 5pm.



The kitchen is at the back of the house (north side) and looks onto bush. The kitchen is small but perfectly formed and after living with a small hand-built kitchen you do rather ask yourself why on earth we need such fancy kitchens! Also here is a photo taken immediately outside the kitchen. From the kitchen I can see a lovely pink bourganvilla (sp?!?) and lots of lizards and birds and the occasional chicken (different from a permanent chicken) scratching around for bugs.

The living room has a sofa, 2 book cases crammed with books (no danger of running out of reading matter here), a TV (satellite hookup) and DVD player. I can only get 4 photos on each posting at a time, so I'll continue the tour of the house in the next post.

chikkins!

We woke up yesterday to the delightful cheeping of 10 (TEN!!!) chicks - this explains why the dark brown hen has been AWOL for some weeks now. So, we immediately set to to build an enclosure for the chickens - wild dogs are a huge threat. By the end of yesterday 150 feet of chicken wire had enclosed a huge area of land, now all we have to do is build the hen house. We still had 10 chicks again this morning so fingers crossed we don't lose too many too soon.

We also now have the satellite up and running and Osh is now glued to Nickelodeon which keeps him out of the sun. Yesterday he spent most of the morning being Gedeon's labourer (Gedeon is Nicky's Haitian labourer) helping him dig a hole and also helping him fix a flat tyre of the poop truck (the truck that sucks out septic tanks and portable loos who's contents provides the water for teh nursery and the toilets in the house).

I have an appointment to see an optician tomorrow to try and get a replacement set of lenses (lost a contact in a freak accident the other week and can't snorkel with glasses) and tomorrow we also have to go to immigration to get our visas extended.

The other ASTONISHING news is that Osh has slept through the night 2 nights running....this brings the number of such nights since we've been here to a staggering 3 nights. This is about as many as he has ever done since he came out of his cot 3 years ago. Needless to say we are all delighted that we sleep undisturbed until 5.30 when he wakes up (grrrr). I daresay that putting this fantastic development into print will immediately jinx us and he'll not sleep through again for weeks!

Pictures of the house and the chicken enclosure coming soon. I'd love to send a picture of the chicks too but they are very small and move too fast!

Thanks for all your comments - and a big get well hug to the lovely Diane!

A life on the ocean waves

We went sailing yesterday on a 20' yacht from Leeward up to Pine Cay and back again. My first time sailing for a long time, Osh's first. He was very good and was allowed a go on the tiller on the way home - learning first hand what happens to the boat when you push and pull the tiller. Both of us achieved a first when we anchored off shore in deep water (don't know how deep, but deeper than me!) and swam to the beach. We put osh in a life jacket and Nicky helped him swim through the water (Nicky has excellent life-saving credentials and so no worries on that front!). I've certainly never done that before (no real urge to swim to shore when I was sailing in the Hebrides) and we had lots of fun. Osh was certainly very pleased with himself. I got into the water first and realised that swimming to shore in my glasses (and now chain) was probably not wise...given that I lost a contact lense the other week! On the way home we passed the mangroves on Little Water Cay and we are going there next weekend in a canoe - Little Water Cay is home to Iguanas. In the photos you can see me, Daniel, Osh and H (the skipper and owner of the boat). Osh has developed Camera shyness and so apologies for his lack of face!

nice weather for frogs

The view we had to tolerate on Saturday when we had fried fish, peas and rice and plantain for lunch....



A visiting frog



Two of the many eagle rays we saw on the reef.

We have no radio here (on account of not having a short wave radio and the local radio stations don't really do news) so no news from that source and the computer is in a container outside the house and not a suitable place for Osh to be so I grab moments on the computer when I can - so little time to spend browsing the newspaper on line. So despite not having an idea of what is going on in the rest of the world (and I have to say, life is none the poorer for not knowing), I'm finding it very difficult to figure out what day it is and thus to remember what I've done all week, but I'll have a go.

We had to go and collect a trailer full of trees from the dock at one point and this meant borrowing a truck from a friend. The truck had a wooden cage built around the outside of the flat bed bit so Osh and I rode down to the dock in the back of the truck. Osh has been itching to ride in the back like all the workers and hitchhikers do for weeks now and he finally got the chance. Pretty bumpy, dirty and windy in the back but he enjoyed it...I was grateful to climb back into the cab for the return journey!

The day after that (which I think was Friday) we had a terrific downpour....huge quantities of rain bucketed down (just after I'd done a pile of washing!)which made the trip to collected Nicky from the boat (he'd been on West Caicos all day) very interesting. Many of the roads are tarmaced....but most of these are in a sorry state of repair and many of the roads (the one to Nicky's house being an example) are dirt tracks. When it rains the water forms huge puddles very quickly. The road to where the boat comes in is in a very bad way and this then gives onto a road that it a dirt track. I was driving a 4wheel drive truck and had a heap of fun negotiating the pot holes (now lakes) and the two vast lakes of water near the boat. I was rather nervous, not having driven through thigh deep water before, but put my foot down and ploughed on. And did it. Osh, bless him, missed the HUGE waves of water the truck created because he was fast asleep on the back seat.

Other excitement this week was a day sailing today - with a lovely Norweigan friend of Nicky's (photos of osh the young sailor coming up soon); yesterday we took a trip on a submersible boat...the underwater bit of the boat has windows so you can see all the fish on the reef. Osh's attention level was pretty short but he did see lots of eagle rays (pictures above). Talking of animals we saw a lizard catch and munch a grasshopper at some point this week....the grasshopper was almost as big as the lizard. Osh enjoyed watching this carnage!

Today we also took a trip to the dump which is horrifying....no controls, fly tipping all the way along the road to the dump where everything is taken - no recycling going on here at all. The place was infested with flies and not somewhere I'll make a habit of visiting (I hope). We were paid a visit by a frog the other night. I very nearly trod on him as I was going to the outside fridge to get something - and managed to get right up close to him without him moving at all. He and his pals are now happy and croaking in the water left over from the rain.

Sailing photos coming tomorrow.

Yesterday was hot. Today was a scorcher but it finally rained this afternoon - the first real rain we have seen since we got here. Yesterday Daniel, Osh, me and 2 Haitian labourers went to tidy up a client's garden - it was hard work and we finally got home about 7.30. We hadn't finished (the light got the better of us) so Osh and I went back this morning. What a mistake! As I drove Daniel to school at 8.30 I could tell it was going to be hot. Just one hour clearing up leaves and I was cooked! It was 30 centigrade by the time I finished and I've not really recovered all day, so was utterly delighted when the rain kicked in dampening down the dust and providing some relief from the heat.

In a moment we are off to deliver plants to another client then home to feed Osh and cook dinner and collapse into bed exhausted. The day here begins around 6 most mornings - by the time Daniel gets up to go to school (about 8am) I have washed up, swept the house, done the laundry, cooked breakfast for him and Osh so by the time 9pm comes around I am done for. The workers in the nursery get here about 6.30 - 7am and work through til about 4.30. On the mornings that I drive Nicky to catch the boat to West Caicos we pass scores of men walking along the road with their billy cans at 6am going to work.

Still no word from the school about whether they have places or not....and I'm just getting to the point when I really like having Osh around all day! He and Daniel are getting on famously and Osh is really enjoying being surrounded by people or day and not just having his Mum as a source of entertainment.

Westward bound

We finally got to West Caicos on Saturday. This involved taking an early morning boat (6.30!) on a beautifully flat calm sea. The journey took about 45 mins and Osh thought this was great fun – possibly his first trip on a speedboat. Four boats went altogether – full of labourers for the hotel building site over there. The only interlopers were me and Osh (women and small children are a rare sight over there at the moment). We had breakfast when we first arrived and then Nicky set to work and Osh and I went to play. We had lots of fun in the ‘swimming pool’. Not a swimming pool as such, more of a pool in which we could swim, if you see what I mean. Nicky’s job over there is to make electricity and water. He makes the water by sucking up cold sea water from out of the harbour and sending this through an RO machine (reverse osmosis). This takes the salt out of the water giving us fresh water which is good enough to drink. More importantly, good enough to make concrete with which is it’s main use at the moment. Anyway, a by product of the process is, of course, salt. And this is spewed out of the machine, down a pipe under the road and out into a depression which has, of course, filled with the water which is more salty than the sea, but not unbearably so. This pool of waste water was about thigh deep on me and vast. We had lots of fun playing in it (it was, in fact, a long, hot and dusty walk to the beach which is steeply shelving) and got very salty!

By mid-morning the heat and dust are up and the glare off the sand is blinding so we retreated to the shade of the two containers that Nicky houses the equipment in. Then the fun started! Being one vast building site (in fact, West Caicos is a National Park and the government have recently given permission for Ritz Carlton to build a luxury hotel there – the hotel site makes up a tiny part of the island itself) the island is stuffed full of boy’s toys: diggers, bulldozers, forklift trucks, tankers, concrete pourers (huge telescopic cranes that pump the concrete into awkward spots). Nicky drove us down to one of the sites where we watched him fix a generator (the source of electricity). Actually, we did more messing around in the bush than watching Nicky! The bush is no more than about 6’ high in most places – just the right height for small boy to run around in and just the right height to force me to crawl along through the prickles and spiky bits!

After a spot of lunch we came back on the speedboat very hot, tired, dusty and (me) a little sun burned! Thank heavens for aloe which is growing outside the front door which provides some instant relief.

Sunday we went out to lunch down by the beach – at a hotel that Nicky had to deliver some plants to so Osh helped load up the plants and unload at the other end. After lunch Daniel and I (with a little help and plenty of distraction from Osh) played giant chess, Daniel beat me….but only just! That afternoon we went to plant some plants at the home of the lovely Emily down on the beach. It was late afternoon by this time – a lovely time of day when the intensity has gone out of the sun and the light is fabulous. Osh helped with the watering and then climbed the tree with Daniel.

Above you can see photos of Daniel and Osh up the tree (sorry it's a bit dark!), Osh watering trees, Osh having breakfast on West Caicos and an example of the sort of ground Nicky has to plant in…..huge swathes of limestone rock on West Caicos…pretty unforgiving stuff if you fall on it!

Photos of the nursery

Here is a picture of the papaya trees growing around the sewage digester tanks (at the top of the property). This is where all the water for the nursery comes from - and, on good days, where the water that flushes the toilets comes from. On bad days when the digesters are working really hard (ie when we've put lots of poop from the portable toilets in there) the water that comes out after it has been filtered and what not is like strong tea and whiffs a bit. Not pleasant for toilet water but the plants love it!

Here is a photo of the nursery taken from the top of the property looking down into the valley - you can just see the upper storey of the house that Nicky is currently building. The road you can see is the route into and out of the property and so I have to suffer each day driving past glorious tropical blooms and palm trees and what not.

And here is a picture of the flowers in the nursery - you can just spy the little wooden house at the bottom of the picture. More photos of the house coming shortly.

Osh and his starfish

That was nice and easy! OK, here we have a photo of Nicky's land taken from the top of the hill at dusk. His house is at the bottom of the hill, just out of the right hand corner of the photo - native bush as far as the eye can see.

Then we have a picture of Osh with a star fish which mysteriously turned up on the garbage heap the other day - when alive in the ocean they are red and very beautiful.




Then there is a picture of the wooden boats osh made, floating in their bucket and then a picture of the bananas on their tree.

Also, a quick thank you to all who have left their comments - Diane, promise I won't post any pictures of creepy crawlies!

Diversions

We’ve been here for just over a week now and all seem to have settled in. Oisin is clearly enjoying having free-run of the house and the nursery – with ample amounts of outside space for him to play in. We are a drive from the beach (the nearest beach is about 15 minutes away) so Nicky bought him a paddling pool and once he realised that jumping in an out of the swimming pool helped him cool down considerably (Osh that is!) we solved the ‘hot sticky and bad tempered’ child problem very quickly.

At the weekend we finished building Oisin’s bedroom and installed a bed and mosquito net. He is most delighted with the sliding door in the bedroom which disappears into the walls. And, we discovered yesterday that it is an excellent viewing spot for humming birds. Immediately outside Osh’s bedroom windows are the tall yellow spikes of the aloe flowers – a favourite of humming birds. We were reading a book on the bed when we both wondered what the strange noise was outside the window. Turns out it was a humming bird hovering all of 6 inches from our noses – the bird couldn’t see us through the bug screen on the window and the mosquito net – normally you can’t get anywhere near that close to them. Now we know why they are called humming bird (their wings make a burring noise as they beat them).

We also took a trip one afternoon to a beach on Grace Bay and Osh and I had a lot of fun in the water. This is not the first time he’s been in the sea, but I think it is probably the first time he has leapt around so extensively in the water (it is usually too cold in England). He was completely unphased by the waves although he didn’t like the taste of the salt water one bit – and he drank plenty of it.

Other forms of amusement have included loading nursery equipment off a barge and onto the back of the truck. South Dock is the main entry and exit point for all goods that come onto the island – and at the moment the bulk of them appear to be building materials both for the massive development of hotels on the island and also the luxury development over on West Caicos. As you can imagine the docks are just chock full of excitement for a small boy. He spent hours watching fork lift trucks moving sacks of cement, a huge contraption that lifts containers up and moves them around (actually, even I found that enthralling) and very, very large cranes. And then he proved most able in helping put empty plant pots on to the back of the truck and then off loading them at the other end.

There is no TV here (because the satellite dish is not working) so Osh has gone about the longest time ever with no telly - but appears to be managing! He watches Thomas on my laptop and last night we rented the Polar Express for him to watch. He has also had to be more imaginative in his games and he made some wooden boats from offcuts. I'll post pictures later when I have the spare hour for them to upload!

Last night Osh helped to feed the 2 dogs and then was allowed to go around the nursery with Nicky turning on and then off all the various sections of irrigation (sprinklers) – he thought that was great fun and told me in great detail how it all works.

Grown-up entertainment consisted last night of a very lovely dinner party at the home of Larry and Beth Sulak. They live in Boston (Larry is a Professor of Physics at MIT) but have been coming to the island for many years on holiday and own a lovely house down by the beach. The prime topic of conversation was the way the islands are changing so rapidly and how the nature of the visitors is changing too. General consensus seemed to be that the pioneering spirit of the early visitors (only 10 years ago Provo was largely undeveloped) is giving way to cut-throat investor types who’s sole interest in the islands is investing money and getting out quick once they have made their fortune. And with condominiums on West Caicos selling for $2200 a square foot there is plenty of money washing around out there!

I have been steadily working on the translations that I brought out with me (paid work but certainly not going to buy me ever one floor tile of a West Caicos condominium!) and cleaning the house, doing the laundry, cooking breakfast. Being a full time cook and mum, in fact. And I’ll tell you now it is exhausting!

The weather has been lovely but the past couple of mornings have been chilly – long sleeves and long trousers sort of weather at first light – although by about 8am it is comfortably warm again.

Yesterday we paid a visit to Osh’s school – a lovely small private primary school run by an old friend of Nicky’s. We hope he will be able to go afternoons, but still waiting to hear if they have spaces. Within the same school they have pre-kindergarten (pre-school) and kindergarten (reception) and Alison (headmistress) and I think that putting him into pre-kinder would be the best option. This way he is the eldest in his class (but not by much) rather than being the very youngest in Kindergarten. If they have room for him I’ll post you photos of the school. He thought the school was lovely – lots of open space and at least 3 different climbing frames for him to romp around on.

Osh and his robot

Here is Osh with Daniel's robot - Osh has learned how to make him go backwards, forwards, turn in circles and spook the dogs!

the rooster

Here is teh rooster - Osh does a very good rooster impression but unfortunately he does it when the rooster does it....at 5.30 am! It is taking about an hour per photo to upload so I think I'm going to have to find an internet cafe to upload the next lot so bear with me.

the lizard

It has taken me nearly 2 hours to up load this one photo so I'm going to try them all one at a time. This is a lizard!

All Creatures great and small

Living in a house with no glass in the windows (never gets cold enough to need glass and if it rains we just close the shutters) and doors that are always left open, there is little distinction between indoors and outdoors. As such all of nature can be found inside the house as well as outside. We have a large collection of lizards and iguanas (although I have no idea what is the difference between the two) skittering over the walls – they are mostly just a couple of inches long. Some of them are a pale creamy colour but my favourites are a dark velvety brown with a thin creamy stripe down their back. They are great at eating up the bugs. The frogs are also good at that. There is a sizeable population of frogs in the water tanks about 50 feet from the house and they sing all through the night – and some of them persist into the day too. The frogs don’t often come into the house although at Christmas there was one hiding behind the Christmas tree and last night we found one in the washing machine which is ‘in waiting’ (ie in anticipation of the current washing machine to give up the ghost) outside the front of the house. We tried to catch the frog last night but he was remarkably slippery and eventually we gave it up and decided to get his this morning. Only this morning he was gone – either hiding around the back of the drum or he has walked (hopped?) out the same way he walked in (although how he did that is a mystery).

The other less desirable occasional residents are the cockroaches. They are by no means the biggest I’ve ever seen and continual exposure to them has rendered them a lot less scary although when they come scurrying out from the cupboards or drawers they still make me jump. Osh calls them beetles and I’ve decided not to disabuse him of their real name for fear that there is an inbuilt human reaction to the word cockroach. For the time being he is not in the least bit frightened of them rather just fascinated by the way they continue to wiggle their legs long after they have, erm, snuffed it.

There are mice and rats around although I’ve never seen any live evidence of either – it is a long while since Nicky has seen a rat – the last one was dispensed off pretty sharpish by Daniel who has proven to be a sharp shooter with the air rifle which they keep to ward of wild dogs – and rats (!). Fear not, the rifle is kept well out of Osh’s reach and he is so far unaware of its existence. The mice are occasionally invited to a tasty supper of cheese whereupon they meet their maker.

By far and away the most irritating visitors are the mosquitoes. Hundreds of the blighters that buzz away at your ears and leave you covered in the bites in the morning. We have mosquito nets over the beds which keep the worst of them at bay but they can get through the smallest of gaps. Fortunately the lizards are rather partial to beetles and mosquitoes and pay their way by munching on them and Osh has proven to have the same reaction to bites as me – that is a small red bite that quickly fades. Coming close in the irritation stakes are the fire ants. Oisin has developed a passion for them - following strict warnings from Nicky not to go near them, not to dig in the dirt for them and a couple of house invasions.

The most beautiful guests are the humming birds – although I’ll confess that they don’t come into the house. They feed off the nectar on the flowers and trees growing outside the house and I shall never tire of watching them hover in mid-air. They look like rather large flies until you spot the long, slender beak.

The chickens occasionally wander into the house but then scatter in all directions if you attempt to go near them. And the dogs wander in and out in a perpetual bid to replenish the dust and dirt that I spend all day sweeping up (one snag of having a house full of boys and dogs and no glass at the windows!).

Erebus moths come in sometimes. They used to be found on the walls of the class room when I was at school in Venezuela and I am terrified of them. They are large (the size of small bird) and black and folklore in Caracas has it that the dust from their wings blinds you. This, apparently, is utter hogwash but I still don’t like them.

And then of course we have the spiders. All the ones I have seen so far are spindly things and not in the least bit scary but a couple of nights ago Daniel (who has no fear at all of anything creepy or crawly) found a monstrous spider carrying a huge egg sack. Even Daniel claimed it was the biggest he’d ever seen. Needless to say I didn’t take advantage of seeing a whopping spider and it was spied in another building so I’m not waiting for it to crawl across my face in the night!

Photos coming as soon as I can get blogger to upload them!

Rad 2.0

Three cheers to the designers of Miami International Airport. They created huge acreages of windows looking out onto the airport runways/gates which can keep a small boy entertained for HOURS! And they also created a number of interesting corners which provide ample space for same small boys to build elaborate railway layouts around their mim (who was busy reading Pride and Prejudice....!). The journey from Canada due south was long and tiring and full of contrasts. It was snowing and 10 below in Toronto when we left (that's 27F for those of you still working in old money) and it was 22 and sunny in Miami when we got there and lovely and warm when we got to the Turks. Toronto is a vast sprawling city, Provo has a bare minimum of tarmac roads and no high rise blocks. We arrived at the house to find a huge banner strung across the living room which Daniel had made "welcome home Lizzie and Oisin" it said! Osh has taken on board the Caribbean thing at full pelt: he's inspected the bananas (still green), the chickens (2 chicks, 2 hens and 2 cocks), the lizards ate a monstrous plate of fish sticks and chips for lunch and wandered around the nursery this evening.

But his best discovery today was Rad 2.0 a battery operated robot that Daniel had for Christmas about 6 years ago (Daniel is now a strapping teenager). It took all day to charge the battery, but no matter - Osh was quite content building complex railway systems and having Rad crash through them! He has been utterly delightful all day (Osh, that is - although for a teenager Daniel has been just delightful with a noisy toddler waking him at 6.30 am too!). The plan to go to the beach after we picked Daniel up from School went by the by (it was very windy and a little chilly here today) because Nicky had to go to the PTA where he managed to rope me into cooking an English dish for the school international something or other next week (!) although he has also volunteered for the sack and egg and spoon race next week! I think I got the easy option.

Today's esoteric question from my boy: Why is this a foreign country mim?

No pictures tonight - been too busy to get the camera out but pictures to follow tomorrow.